When summer storms roll through southern Ontario, city officials depend on stormwater management ponds to store runoff, keep pollutants out of lakes and rivers and prevent basements from flooding. Today, however, municipalities are increasingly adding Low Impact Development (LID) technologies to complement those ponds. Peppered throughout urban environments, these inconspicuous landscape features may take the [...]
As 2018 draws to an end, SOWC reflects on a busy and productive past year. We wanted to take this opportunity to revisit some of this year’s highlights. We shared a story about the amazing women driving AWT projects And [...]
Across North America, drinking water treatment plants have to keep trihalomethanes (THMs) — a potential carcinogen — below strict limits. However, if they don’t have sophisticated gas chromatography equipment and trained specialists on site, plants must rely on commercial labs to test their samples. That means waiting up to a week to get results, which [...]
What a difference a couple of years can make. When we first introduced you to Greyter Water Systems in 2016, the Ontario-based company was fine-tuning its new residential greywater product. By filtering shower and bath water so it can be reused for flushing toilets, the Greyter HOME system can cut household water consumption an impressive [...]
It is estimated that Canada’s wastewater treatment plants produce as much as 660,000 tonnes of dried sludge in a year. While a portion of the sludge may be treated and recycled as fertilizer, most facilities dispose of the remainder through landfills or incineration, placing a strain on their operating costs as well as on the [...]
Phosphorus is getting a bad rap these days — and with good reason. According to recent estimates, humans are pumping 10 million tonnes of this nutrient into the world’s lakes and rivers each year[1] with results that can be devastating. In 2014, for example, a massive bloom of blue-green algae, fueled by phosphorus, turned large [...]
Every year, diseases caused by contaminated drinking water kills hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Detecting contamination early — before dangerous microorganisms have a chance to multiply — would save countless lives. Right now, however, testing water samples means sending them to a lab. In remote communities, or even in big cities like [...]
Chlorination has been used in water treatment for more than 100 years. But there are growing concerns about its effectiveness in removing certain pathogens and its long-term effects on both humans and the environment. UV disinfection is very quickly gaining ground on chlorination because it’s effective, environmentally friendly and economical. But, in many ways the [...]
Across the continent, water mains laid down during the post-WWII housing boom are reaching the end of their life. Out of sight, small cracks and leaks are going undetected until they turn into catastrophic bursts. And all that wasted water can cost cities millions of dollars every year. Echologics has a solution. The Mississauga company [...]
SanEcoTec, an Ottawa-based company, has developed a water treatment system that it believes can meet the myriad challenges facing North America’s water industry, using a substance similar to one found in most medicine cabinets. With support from Southern Ontario Water Consortium’s Advancing Water Technologies (AWT) program, which is funded by the Federal Economic Development Agency [...]
